Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister's engagement with the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht regarding our national cultural institutions and spaces. The Project 2040 plan includes significant sums of money for the National Museum, the National Archives, the National Concert Hall and the National Library. Such places are repositories of our heritage. I commend Senator Humphreys on his initiative in pushing for this debate, which addresses one of the realities for people who live in apartments. The recession gave us precarious work. Many people are living in precarious accommodation. As Senator Humphreys has pointed out in the past, there is no equivalent to the mica and pyrite scheme for people who are facing these difficulties. Renters in Dublin and elsewhere must live in unsafe conditions in properties they do not own because there are no affordable options elsewhere. We see stories in the media every few weeks about overcrowded dorm rooms laden with multiple bunk beds at cut-price below market rates. Such properties are allegedly occupied by non-national workers who come here to improve their living standards.

The example I would like to cite does not involve an apartment. It was recently discovered that 38 people were paying €400 each per month to share a ten-bedroom house in East Wall. This meant that the landlord had an income of €15,200 per month. There should be no ambiguity in this regard. I have proposed the Property Services (Advertisement of Unfit Lettings) (Amendment) Bill 2019 to deal with such unsafe and inhumane properties that rob tenants of any level of privacy. We are in a dire situation. Prohibition or stronger enforcement will put tenants at risk of homelessness. The Government's response needs to address this issue. The only way to do this is to advance affordable options. The property I have mentioned is like others that feature regularly on daft.ieand rent.ie. I wrote to the Department after the Second Stage debate on the Bill in this Chamber. I hope progress is being made with the Department's work in this regard because I have not heard back about the advertisement of properties.

We should consider those who bought homes and apartments from developers without being aware of the fire safety difficulties that existed. We are talking about a culture of compliance, but I remind the House that in one of these cases, the developer has said he does "not have a legal obligation on this matter" and has suggested to complainants that "unless you have a compelling legal argument to put forward we absolutely will not be paying for this". In such cases, concerned owners are forced to seek litigation in the absence of a redress scheme. The Minister has said that a redress scheme could leave the Government and every taxpayer in the State open to an onerous open-ended liability that simply could not be met. I would like to know how the Department intends to respond, in the absence of a redress scheme, so that the owners of properties which are deemed unsafe are not forced to pay or do not feel they have no option other than to engage in costly litigation. In some cases, litigation can be as expensive as the repairs themselves.

The Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government agreed unanimously in its report, Safe as Houses? A Report on Building Standards, Building Controls & Consumer Protection, that homeowners living in Celtic tiger properties with latent defects deserve a redress scheme to assist them in meeting the costs of remedial works. The report also proposes that an agency like the Food Safety Authority or the Environmental Protection Agency should be established. The Minister of State, Deputy English, has indicated that the Department does not intend to accept this proposal. I wonder why it does not intend to accept it. Such an agency could be given responsibility for vetting the advertisement of unsafe and overcrowded rental properties.